Seargent Shultz at the AJC

It's getting kind of interesting at the old Atlanta Journal Constitution as the facts on the ground in Iraq change. The public editor of the AJC wrote a column on Saturday, where he defended his newspaper's coverage of Iraq, saying:

No doubt for many readers, the lack of security for journalists in Iraq is not a good enough excuse for failure to provide a comprehensive report about what is happening there. But it doesn't change the fact that meaningful, independent reporting about the rebuilding effort simply doesn't exist right now.

Fair enough. Then, how good of a job is the AJC (really Cox News Service) reporter doing in covering the story in Iraq? Let's read an excerpt from an article in Sunday's AJC from the reporter on the scene. Here, the writer is referring to John Negroponte, the incoming United States Ambassador to Iraq (emphasis mine):

The few who know his background focus on his criticized human rights record as ambassador to Honduras in the 1980s and his controversial role as the U.N. ambassador who decried Iraq's weapons of mass destruction --- which were never found --- and supported economic sanctions.

This contrasts with reports from the Iraqi Survey group that between 10 to 12 sarin and mustard gas shells have been discovered to date in Iraq.

I wrote an email to the public editor about this, and my observation to him boiled down to this: You all could say that they are old or if used as intended would have killed few. However, that’s a much different thing than stating that they do not exist.

So what do you say to a little accurate reporting?

I'll let you know if I get a response.

Update: About what I expected for a response:

Sorry, as much as you apparently would like them to be, I wouldn't characterize that discovery as anything close to finding WMD; not even the White House does, especially since the military confirms they were pre-Gulf War 1 and no one disputed that Saddam had them then.

Comments

[Rick DeMent]

And to think the FCC is pushing to give these clowns an even bigger share of the media pie.